Developmental Lessons For Aquarius

In order to develop your human potential and use it as an instrument for your liberation, it needs to be understood that your education has to be a subversive activity versus being a program for unquestioned compliance.

One of the messages in your life that must ring loud and true is that your evaluation of what’s personally rewarding needs to be self structured, as opposed to being implanted or inculcated from outside forces.

Aquarius, in its association with Uranian eccentricity and being ruled by the pragmatism and common sense of Saturn, carries two distinct messages: (1) If you’re not rebelling, in some form, against the prevailing order, it needs to be seriously examined and (2) If there’s no structure, strategy or organization in your insurgency, there’s equal cause for concern.

As I’ve frequently stated, effective Astrology produces more thought-provoking questions than answers. Your questions center around the role that conformity and non-conformity plays in your life.

It bears examination that conformity, in itself isn’t a negative thing. In some cases it’s necessary and desirable for the achieving of a concrete goal. In fact, you’ll most likely realize that in some areas of your life you’ll even have to concede to some version of conformity and it’s merely a matter of what parts of yourself require this concession. That being said, it doesn’t deem you any less “revolutionary”.

Keep in mind that your particular brand of resistance isn’t designed to discover the ways that you can best “adjust” to the status quo, but rather to initiate through ideas, and participate through action, in changing the nuts and bolts of the ENTIRE system or systems that you find restrictive or oppressive.

Again, let’s not lose sight of a need for direction and definition.

In your inverted or maladjusted form, you can be a staunch advocate for all that’s “traditional”, upholding the present state of affairs to the degree that it serves your particular and selfish interests (read: ” I got mine, now get yours). There can even be a feeling of superiority in upholding the “rules”.

You can become a rebel without a cause, or consciously choose less threatening and consequential measures of eccentricity under the veneer of “making a statement.”

The Aquarius Archetype:

The Rebel. The Weirdo. The Beatnik, The Revolutionary. The Futurist. The Eccentric. The Free Spirit. The Reformer. The Activist. The Humanitarian. The Mad Scientist. The Non-Conformist. The Individualist. Ms./Mr. Socially Conscious.

Aquarius carries the element of Air with a fixed modality which speaks to concepts and is well suited to resistance and determination. When we examine the water bearer, we immediately think to ask: What’s in the water? Also, What are you bearing?

My answer, although incomplete, is enough to get one’s mental wheels churning: those with major Aquarian Energy (Sun & other personal planets) are bearing the tools needed to awaken (and even shock on some level) the masses through the questioning of the status quo.Contained in the archetypal Aquarian makeup is the psychologically undeniable need for emancipation and reform. As to how that’s achieved: avenues vary.

Those with this heavy water-bearing influence are inclined to experiment more than most because, when MATURE, Aquarian energy lacks a slavish attachment to ultimate outcomes and has a greater concern with possible pathways for innovation. Hence, the neutralization of significant approval needs grants much more breathing room than those who are constantly looking over their shoulder for validation. The developmental jewel here is to INTENTIONALLY structure one’s own standards and programs for self-recognition.

In a positively functional and empowered state, the Aquarian has accepted that ridicule, intermittent bouts of alienation, and isolation comes with the territory of their mission on earth, and these are less important than what they’re seeking to locate and bring out of themselves for the benefit of humanity.

When one allows external dictates to predominate, they become prey to the prescriptions for conformity indicated by the research of Edward Walker and Roger Heyns:

” If one wishes to produce conformity for good or evil, the formula is clear. Manage to arouse a need or needs that are important to the individual or to the group. Offer a goal which is appropriate to the need or needs. Make sure that conformity is instrumental to the achievement of the goal and that the goal is as large and certain as possible. ”

“Apply the goal or reward at every opportunity. Try to prevent the object of your efforts from obtaining an uncontrolled education. Choose a setting that’s ambiguous. Do everything possible to see that the individual has little or no confidence in his own position.

“Do everything possible to make the norm which you set to appear highly valued and attractive. Set it at a level not too far initially from the starting position of the individual or the group and move it gradually toward the behavior you wish to produce. Be absolutely certain you know what you want and that you’re willing to pay an enormous price in human quality, for whether the individual or the group is aware of it or not, the result will be CONFORMITY”

(Italics and caps mine)

The temptation here, is to pursue the “dangled carrot” and to choose ultra-conformity, based on a mirage of security as opposed to a springboard or necessity to more organizationally insubordinate endeavors.